


bury me in your memory

by vampiresuffrage



Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-28
Updated: 2020-04-28
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:08:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23898766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vampiresuffrage/pseuds/vampiresuffrage
Summary: It wasn’t a real kiss. Dennis had kissed plenty of people, and this wasn’t the same. Their mouths were a little too open, because this was just to get high and nothing else, and they weren’t touching anywhere besides their lips and their knees, and kissing definitely didn’t involve exhaling into the other person’s mouth.Dennis still felt winded.or: Mac and Dennis decide to try shotgunning, and it's definitely not an excuse to kiss each other.
Relationships: Mac McDonald/Dennis Reynolds
Comments: 9
Kudos: 101





	bury me in your memory

**Author's Note:**

> thanks jackie for enabling my behavior ily ❤ go follow her bastardmanvibes on tumblr!!
> 
> hiatus is making me go crazy and now its 4/20 and i just think mac and dennis shotgunned when they were younger because they wanted to kiss!!! and they had complicated feelings about it!!!
> 
> title comes from goodbye, my danish sweetheart by mitski!!! because they for sure both decided to repress the shit out of this and never talk about it again when they got older

It was one of those things they didn’t talk about. Mac probably even believed the bullshit excuses he gave for it, but Dennis saw it for what it was: a loophole.

At the homecoming afterparty senior year, Dennis found Mac staring glassy-eyed at two girls who were shotgunning a blunt on a dare, in that way that was meant to look hot and involved way more kissing than strictly necessary because they were putting on a show. Mac was already halfway to drunk, clearly, but Dennis could see the wheels in his head turning.

Way too long after the girls were done, Mac finally tore his eyes away from the empty space they’d occupied and looked at Dennis. As soon as their eyes met, Mac’s face went red and he looked away again. So. Not hard to figure out what Mac had been thinking about.

He didn’t bring it up though. Mac had his whole Catholic thing, so Dennis gave him time to think. Time to stew in it. He knew Mac’s terrible impulse control would win out eventually, and Dennis could be patient.

Turns out he didn’t need to be though, because Mac brought it up a week later while he was rolling a joint in Dennis’ backyard. Charlie had called and said his mom was having an episode, whatever the fuck that meant, so it was just the two of them.

“So remember those chicks who were, like, smoking out of each other’s mouths or whatever?” Mac asked. He didn’t look at Dennis.

Dennis still shrugged. “I guess.”

Mac nodded. “Cool, cool. So I was thinking, that’s gotta be a super efficient way to get high, right? Like, you both get the same amount of high with half the amount of weed. It’d save me a shitload of money since you haven’t paid for weed from me since we were freshmen.” His hands were shaking when he lifted the joint to lick the edge of the paper.

“Yeah, probably. What’re you saying?” He knew exactly what Mac was trying to say. He just wanted to see how much he could make Mac admit. He wasn’t going to do it if Mac couldn’t even ask. He didn’t bother mentioning that most of the time, shotgunning didn’t have to involve actually touching lips because...well, he just didn’t. He didn’t need to.

“Well, I mean--” He stopped himself from finishing the sentence. Dennis wasn’t sure how much of it was actually him being a pussy and how much was him concentrating. He always got weirdly focused when he was rolling a joint, stared right at it and stuck his tongue out of the corner of his mouth like it had to be perfect to be worth smoking. Once he’d finished rolling it, he looked at his handiwork proudly for a second, then looked up at Dennis and immediately got that nervous half-smile again.

Dennis raised an eyebrow at him. He knew if he actually told Mac to keep talking, Mac would panic and change the subject.

“I just meant, maybe we could try it? Hear me out, bro! It’d be totally cool, because we could get even more high without even having to use more weed, and--”

“Sure, whatever.” Dennis didn’t need convincing, he just needed Mac to ask. He decided that night at the party he’d be okay with it, as soon as Mac looked at him like he _wanted_ him. Dennis...well, he deserved to feel wanted, didn’t he? And who was he to deny Mac, especially when it would keep Mac there, wrapped around his finger? That was why he was allowing this. That, and nothing else. He took the joint from Mac’s hand and pulled a lighter out of his pocket. “I’m going first though.”

Mac got wide-eyed in that way he always did when Dennis did something he didn’t expect. “Okay, yeah. That’s cool, sure.” His voice was high and loud. He’d never admit it, but it did that a lot when he was nervous, especially around Dennis.

Dennis lit the joint. “You should probably be sitting closer, buddy.”

Mac nodded quick, practically fell over himself to scoot in close to Dennis until their knees were touching.

Dennis put the joint to his lips, took a deep breath in, ignored the way his stomach twisted at how intently Mac was staring at his mouth.

Once he was pretty sure he’d gotten enough, he leaned in. Mac’s lips parted and Dennis definitely didn’t stare at Mac’s bottom lip or the way it was visibly pinker than usual because he’d been biting at it all morning. Holding the smoke in his mouth had started to burn at the back of his throat, so he started blowing out before he ruined it by coughing when Mac’s mouth was barely an inch from his.

Apparently he didn’t need to worry though, because then Mac tried to suck in the smoke way too quick and coughed it all back in Dennis’ face. Dennis choked on the rest of the smoke in his mouth trying to flinch back from Mac, and then they were both doubled over coughing. Dennis would’ve been pissed if Mac didn’t already have a kicked puppy look on his face.

Dennis didn’t _not_ want to try it again and see what would happen if Mac didn’t fuck it up, so he didn’t even say anything about how Mac should’ve learned something from staring so much at those chicks.

Instead, he just sighed loud enough for Mac to know he was annoyed and rolled his eyes. “Dude, hurry up and get back over here if you want to try again before this burns itself out,” he said, nodding towards the joint in his hand which was somehow getting smaller despite the fact that everything about this felt like it was happening outside the normal rules of time and space and heterosexuality.

Mac scooted in again, just as quick but a little less clumsy, less overeager. Maybe he felt less nervous the second time around. Dennis could still feel his heart in his throat. He told himself it was just from all the coughing and even half-believed it.

He took another hit, slow and deep, determined to get this right. It was just to prove he could. It barely had anything to do with Mac.

He leaned in, breathed out just as slow as he’d breathed in, forced the itch in his throat out of his mind. Mac inhaled slower this time, apparently he’d learned his lesson.

Somehow, Dennis was still surprised when his lips touched Mac’s. He’d kept his eyes open even after Mac closed his, so he’d seen them getting closer until their faces were close enough for everything to blur, but he still felt like he’d stuck his finger in a light socket when it happened.

It wasn’t a real kiss. Dennis had kissed plenty of people, and this wasn’t the same. Their mouths were a little too open, because this was just to get high and nothing else, and they weren’t touching anywhere besides their lips and their knees, and kissing definitely didn’t involve exhaling into the other person’s mouth.

Dennis still felt winded. He still felt his hands shaking the same way they did during his first kiss, his first time with a girl, the first time he let a guy make out with him in a pantry at a party when he was too drunk for it to count. When Dennis had finished exhaling, a second and an eternity later, Mac turned his head just the slightest bit, and then their lips slotted together and it was a real kiss for the second and a half before Mac pulled away to blow out the smoke. He coughed again, just a small one this time, and Dennis took that moment to collect himself.

Mac’s eyes were glazed over when he looked at Dennis. Dennis knew it took more than one hit for Mac to get high enough to look like that. That was because of Dennis. Dennis wondered if he was much better off, actually.

He held the joint out to Mac. “Your turn.”

Mac nodded and didn’t say a word. There was a joke in there somewhere about how he’d have done this sooner if he knew it would make Mac shut up so easy, but it stuck in his throat. He wanted to see how it felt to be on the other end of that more than he wanted to make fun of Mac in that moment, and that was definitely a new feeling for Dennis.

Mac leaned in. Dennis’ throat clicked when he swallowed.

Mac blew out slowly, his lips pursed so the smoke went where he wanted it, and maybe he’d been paying more attention than Dennis thought and he really was just nervous the first time. Dennis was so fixated on Mac’s mouth he almost forgot to inhale. He probably didn’t breathe in as much of it as Mac, truth be told, because watching Mac lean in closer to him instead of the other way around made his chest tighten up in a way he wasn’t used to and made the business of inhaling far more difficult than it needed to be.

He was pretty sure Mac didn’t notice though, because he had that weird focused look on his face again. He kissed Dennis again. Dennis was better at breathing the smoke out of his nose than Mac, so he didn’t pull away immediately. Neither did Mac. Neither of them made a move to turn it into anything more, just pressed their lips together like middle schoolers having their first kiss, but Mac nudged his chin forward a fraction of an inch even after neither of them had any smoke left in their mouths. Dennis just barely swiped his tongue against Mac’s bottom lip before he pulled back and pretended he didn’t notice how tightly Mac clenched his fist in his lap.

They finished off two joints sitting out there because...because. Usually they capped off at two between all three of them without any smoke being shared. They didn’t mention it.

They laid out on the grass afterwards. Neither of them talked much. Dennis got in his head when he was high. Usually Charlie was there as a buffer for Mac, but now they just had to lay in the quiet.

He felt calm like this. He stared at the sky and felt everything fade until he was the only thing left in the world except maybe Mac, but the jury was still out on whether Mac was real like Dennis or not.

Either way, when the world ceased to exist like this for Dennis, it set him at ease like nothing else. He could think and feel and it didn’t even have to look good because it didn’t matter.

He decided kissing Mac felt good while he was laying there like that. He wanted to know if it would, that’s why he let any of this happen in the first place if he was being honest. And it did. He decided that when they were sober enough to smoke more, he wanted to do it again.

When he did get sober, he decided that was fucking stupid. He asked Maureen Ponderosa to be his girlfriend three days later to prove any and all of those weird gay thoughts wrong. Dennis didn’t want to kiss Mac. Mac wanted to kiss Dennis, and Dennis wanted Mac to need him more.

It didn’t stop him from saying yes when Mac asked if he wanted to do it again. Dennis wasn’t gay for Mac, but Mac wasn’t terrible, especially once he got better at not coughing.

They agreed they wouldn’t do it when Charlie was there. They knew Charlie would probably ask to try, and they both agreed that would make it weird. They did not ask why it would be weird with Charlie but not each other. They didn’t talk about those kinds of questions.

A few months later, Dennis accidentally forgot he’d invited Maureen over to stay the night while his parents were out of town and he invited Mac over to get crossfaded the same night. Maureen let herself in, and she definitely seemed pissed, but Dennis was already two drinks and a joint in so it was hard to tell for sure.

He followed her when she stormed out of his bedroom though because that was the kind of thing a boyfriend was supposed to do when his girlfriend stormed out.

“Maureen, wait, don’t go” he said, putting a hand on her shoulder. He didn’t know what to say after that. He honestly didn’t think he cared all that much if she did leave, but he knew he was supposed to, and he lived by the principle of faking it until he made it.

“Dennis, I just saw you kissing a _boy_. You don’t get to ask me to stay!” She shrugged his hand off and crossed her arms over her chest. Okay, so she was definitely pissed.

Dennis rolled his eyes. “It’s called shot--shotgunning,” he said, the word a lot harder to get out when he wasn’t sober. “Gets you higher since you only use half the weed. Obviously.”

Maureen scoffed. “Do you think I’m stupid?”

Yes. “Of course I don’t, baby. But you gotta know Mac and I aren’t, you know.”

“You know what Dennis? I think you might be! I think you _think_ you’re not, but you are.”

Dennis narrowed his eyes. “How dare you--”

Maureen clenched her jaw. “Don’t, Dennis. I’m done, okay? This is done.”

“Baby, no. Don’t be like that, don’t say that.”

Maureen laughed. It was a fake, ugly laugh. Dennis didn’t like it. “Don’t bother, I’m not gonna tell anyone. Your _reputation_ isn’t in danger.” She spit the word out like it burned her. “I don’t want people thinking I was stupid enough to date a guy who doesn’t even like girls.”

“Fine, you want to leave? Fucking go, I don’t care. Get out of my goddamn house.” He couldn’t even yell at her, he was shaking too much with rage. For her to assume that _Dennis_ of all people was--

It was fucking ridiculous. He stayed at the top of the stairs and watched her until she was out of his house.

Mac was still sitting on the bed when Dennis went back into his room. He was playing with the edge of the blanket and looking at the bed like he expected Dennis to start screaming. Seeing Mac look so pitiful made him feel something like pride. Dennis sat back on the bed.

Mac looked at him wide-eyed, then ventured a smile. “Fuck her, right?”

Dennis snorted. “No shit.” He grabbed the bottle of whiskey out of Mac’s hands and took as big a gulp as he could without his face bunching up unattractively. “Good thing we were already getting wasted.”

Mac laughed at that, still visibly unsure of where he stood with Dennis. That power was a high all by itself, and Dennis felt that ugly thing that had tried to explode out of him content in his chest again.

They didn’t talk about Maureen for the rest of the night. The rest of the night went just as planned.

If Dennis decided, somewhere around six drinks and three joints in, to make out with Mac after a hit, just to prove to himself and to Maureen goddamn Ponderosa that he wasn’t attracted to him, that was nobody’s fucking business. He didn’t quite black out, so he wasn’t lucky enough to forget it the next morning, and he wasn’t stupid enough to ask if Mac remembered too.

They really didn’t smoke alone together all that much. Charlie was with them more often than not, obviously, so that night was the first and last time that happened, and it was the last time they smoked together just the two of them for the rest of senior year.

Two days before Dennis left for Penn, he felt fucked up and it finally hit that he was about to be alone. Sure, Dee was going there too but they'd already agreed not to do shit with each other until they already had friends. They weren't going to be weird inseparable twins who didn't talk to anyone else. Mac and Charlie weren't going to college, clearly, let alone one like Penn.

Dennis had gotten comfortable with the knowledge that Mac and Charlie were always right there to be his friends or his punching bags depending on the day. They never left him. He was allowed to be the God he deserved to be. Obviously they could come visit him if he paid their cab fare, but they wouldn’t be at his beck and call anymore.

If Dennis was being _really_ honest with himself, and he could do that sometimes, he felt fucked up because he’d miss having them around. He couldn’t put a name to the feeling, but he knew it was a stupid fucking emotion. He sat on his floor and stared at his shit, half-packed in boxes around him, and tried to will it away.

An indeterminate amount of time later, someone knocked on his door frame. Dee never knocked, and his parents were who-the-hell-knew where. He looked up, slowly blinking to recenter himself. Mac was standing there, looking down at him confused.

“Dee said you needed help packing? Uh, I thought it was weird that she called instead of you, but I thought I should probably come just in case?” He sounded fucking sheepish enough about it to make Dennis wonder how long he’d been standing there, just watching Dennis try to disappear.

“Goddammit Dee,” he muttered, shaking his head. She was too fucking nosy. “Yeah, come on in. You can start taping up the boxes that are already full if you want.” He gestured with his head to a roll of packing tape on his desk and Mac went without question.

“So where’s Charlie?” Mac practically lived with Charlie during the summer doing God only knew what, so it seemed unlikely that Dee could only call one of them.

Mac rolled his eyes. “His AC broke and Mrs. Kelly is, like, _freaking_ out about it. He’s trying to fix it himself because they couldn’t get a repair guy in today.”

Dennis wrinkled his nose. He figured he’d probably kill himself if his mom was as neurotic as Charlie’s.

They worked in relative silence after that. Dennis didn’t know what to say.

Something like halfway through, Mac cleared his throat. “Wanna take a break?”

Dennis shrugged. He wanted to fucking get it over with, but Mac got all weird and twitchy when Dennis was in a bad mood. “I guess.”

Mac perked up, just a little bit. “Is it cool if I smoke?”

Dennis squinted at Mac, shook his head. “When have I _ever_ stopped you from smoking?”

Mac huffed. “You get all weird and shit about smoking in your room sometimes, I just wanted to make sure it was cool.”

“Dude, I’m moving out in two days. I don’t give a shit if it smells like weed in here after I leave, it’s not my problem anymore.”

That was all the reassurance Mac needed to pull out the cigarette carton he kept a few already rolled joints in at all times. He’d gotten cigarettes on his eighteenth birthday because he could and he thought it made him hot shit or something. He smoked half of one and fucking hated it, so he gave the pack to Dennis. He asked to keep the carton though because he insisted nobody would think to look for weed in it.

Dennis grabbed his lighter off his desk and tossed it to Mac because he knew by now there was no way Mac didn’t forget his lighter at Charlie’s. Mac smiled gratefully when he caught it, which meant Dennis was right.

Mac didn’t even bother offering Dennis the joint after he took a hit. Presumptuous piece of shit. He just waited for Dennis to sit closer to him and then started to lean in immediately after he inhaled. Dennis didn’t tell him to back off though. He was way too aware that this was the last time they were going to get to do this, at least until Dennis was done with college or he could find a way to justify inviting Mac to visit him without Charlie.

It still felt too real when Mac kissed him, even though they’d been doing this for months. He had to squeeze his thigh to stop himself from reaching out to touch Mac. There were still lines, Dennis knew that, and if he did some stupid shit like grab Mac’s waist or touch his face, that would cross all of them.

He could maybe admit to himself, now that he was about to leave, now that he wouldn’t see Mac every day, that he did want to kiss Mac. Not just to get high or to make Mac need him more. He liked kissing Mac. It was only as weird and gay as he made it though, and as long as he didn’t say it out loud, he was fine.

They barely finished off half the joint before Dennis turned away from Mac to keep packing. Mac kissed him like he meant it every hit and Dennis’ hands were shaking with how hard it was not to grab him, to keep him there. He needed some air.

“What are you doing bro?”

Dennis ignored the disappointment that was way too obvious in Mac’s voice.

“I’m sick of looking at this shit, I want to finish packing. You can finish that off before you help again if you want.” At least it was a believable excuse, Dennis really did hate seeing all his shit scattered and half-packed like this.

“Oh, um. Okay. I guess.”

Dennis didn’t say anything else.

He’d barely picked up the packing tape when Mac spoke again.

"I'm gonna miss you dude." Mac didn't even try to make it sound like a joke or anything. He said it like he meant it.

"Yeah." It was all Dennis could say. Anything else would be too much. He didn't look at him.

He heard Mac take a deep breath behind him, and before he'd even made the decision he turned around and kissed Mac. Mac kissed back for longer than Dennis expected before he pulled back like Dennis had hit him. Dennis ignored the way it started to burn behind his eyes.

"Dennis, what was that?"

His voice was all wrong. He was doing that forced calm thing he always did when he was about to freak out.

"Thought I heard you take a hit. Sorry."

It was a lie. Mac didn't call him on it. Dennis almost wished he did.

**Author's Note:**

> come say hi on tumblr at [dykedennis](https://dykedennis.tumblr.com)!


End file.
